Hidden Histories: Digitizing the Black History and Visual Culture Collection

This presentation will provide an overview of the digitization workflow and in-house processing for the Black History and Visual Culture collection held by the Eberly Family Special Collections Library at The Pennsylvania State University. As part of the University Libraries’ Strategic Plan for Discovery, Access and Preservation, the Digital Collections Management Program has focused on improved access and stewardship of diverse collections that represent historically underrepresented and marginalized groups through digitization and collection remediation. By embracing this goal, subject experts have been encouraged to pursue new initiatives, such as the Black History and Visual Culture collection that highlights primary resources and publications about the Black experience. Some of the selected materials required condition assessments, enhancements to descriptive metadata, as well as in-depth evaluation of copyright and sensitive content. This collection inspired project proposal for associated collections that been connected together through collection pages and educational resources. For these reasons, the Black History and Visual Culture collection is serving as a model for other subject-based digital collections.